‘Everest Dark’ review: A Sherpa’s last summit to bring back the dead

Dir: Jereme Watt. Canada. 2025. 90mins

The enduring fascination of the world’s highest mountain is reframed in this dutifully stirring documentary about a renowned Sherpa’s quest to honour the peak that his people refer to as Chomolungma or the “Mother Goddess of the World”. Having retired from climbing, Mingma Tsiri Sherpa returns once more; his hope is to restore balance by bringing down some of the 200 or so bodies of dead climbers and sherpas that remain on the slopes. Jereme Watt’s film combines the requisite breathtaking shots of majestic towering peaks with insights into the profound spiritual significance of Mount Everest to the devout Buddhist Sherpas.

 A film with an inherent visual drama

Director Jereme Watt is no stranger to shooting in extreme conditions: his work includes numerous TV series about bruising environments (Rocky Mountain Wreckers, Highway Thru Hell, Mud Mountain Haulers, etc). But Everest Dark, with its wind-lashed blizzard conditions and treacherous crevasses, is a step up: it’s a film with an inherent visual drama.

The perspective of the mountain through the cultural and spiritual lens of the Sherpas is not a new one – Jennifer Peedom’s Sherpa (2015), Eliza Kubarska’s The Wall Of Shadows (2022) and Lucy Walker’s Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa (2023) are among the many films that have explored this aspect of Everest. Even so, the seemingly insatiable audience appetite for documentaries about climbing and mountain-based peril should ensure that Everest Dark is a title of interest for streamers and perhaps specialist distributors.

Mingma Tsiri is a second generation mountain guide – his elderly father, whose words, translated into English, provide a narration for the film, was a runner for Sir Edmund Hilary. Mingma, now in his early 50s, has climbed the mountain 19 times during his celebrated career. But following the devastating earthquake of 2015 which killed 21 climbers at Everest base camp, Mingma resolved never to summit the mountain again. Everest, for Mingma, is a sacred place which has been disrespected by the burgeoning climbing industry. Around 800 mountaineers per year attempt to reach the summit; to date over 300 have died in the attempt, one third of whom were Sherpas.

Many of the bodies of the dead remain on the mountain. For the devout, this is both a desecration of a spiritual place and an interruption of the Buddhist cycle of life (bodies need to be returned to their families and loved ones in order for reincarnation to take place). To the distress of his wife Chhiring, who is all too aware of the risks involved, Mingma decides to scale the mountain once again – this time to make his peace with the Mother Goddess whose patience has been tested and her hospitality has been abused.

There’s a tried and tested formula to this kind of documentary filmmaking and Everest Dark adheres to much of it. Slow motion sequences are rather overused, and there are numerous awkwardly-staged conversations with Mingma’s loved ones which emphasise the risks inherent in his mission. The score, all ominous orchestral rumbles and fraught, sawing strings, adds to the manufactured tension. Not surprisingly, Watt, whose CV includes stints as a drone operator, makes extensive use of breathtaking aerial footage of everything from the rooftops of Kathmandu to the sheer, near vertical sheets of ice peppered with tiny clinging figures.

It’s undeniably spectacular, but the most arresting shots are not the traditionally beautiful frames full of blue skies and frosted peaks. More striking are the scenes that show snaking queues of climbers, trudging into the dead zone to take their turn at the summit; the necklaces of lights as chains of mountaineers ascend by night when the ice is firmer. The flank of the world’s highest mountain looks as busy as an Ikea checkout on a bank holiday. It gives a stark indication of the industrial scale of this form of elite tourism, and the considerable cost to the mountain communities. It’s no wonder that the Mother Goddess is irked.